


Values

by bomberqueen17



Series: The Lost Kings [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: F/M, Gratuitous Parenting, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Mixed Feelings On Parenthood, Pregnancy, Professionalism, Relationship Negotiations, The Empire's Maternity Leave Policies Are Not Discussed, Working While Pregnant, kink negotiations, kitchen woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7347367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Immediate-ish sequel to The Lost Kings. Kes Dameron is the Most Embarrassing Dad Ever, and Shara Bey, ultra-cool flashy courier pilot, has to learn to deal.<br/>His views on childrearing are probably not exactly compatible with the Empire's policies.<br/>Also Kes and Norasol both maybe need to chill a little bit because it takes a while to make babies and we're not there yet. Shara's pretty sure they're taking this too seriously.<br/>(Shara loves it.)<br/>Mention of a past attempted sexual assault that Shara responded violently to, but only a passing indirect mention and no details given.<br/>I wrote this before certain revelations about a particular minor canon character, and discovered that incorporating them made the story a lot more interesting. Considered not tagging him, since he is a toddler and consequently has basically no lines, but I ultimately felt that'd be sort of goofy of me. There he is. His canon first name is way worse than the one I'd come up with for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Values

**Author's Note:**

> "She also has to show her baby the kind of life she leads, so that if she gets up at three in the morning, does her chores and tends the animals, she does it all the more so when she's pregnant, conscious that the child is taking all this in. She talks to her child continuously from the first moment he's in her stomach, telling him how hard his life will be. It's as if the mother were a guide explaining things to a tourist. ...It's a duty to her child that a mother must fulfil." ... I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman In Guatemala: Chapter II, Birth Ceremonies

  


“It’s not silly,” Kes said firmly, not at all for the first time. “He can hear you.”

Shara knew from experience now that this was not a negotiable point and the most efficient thing to do was to just let him do what he would. He had brought a shoulder bag clearly full of something, and deposited it at her feet, and now he was on his knees in front of her, oh stars, pressing his ear against her belly.

In public. She was standing next to the ship she was about to get into, waiting for the— whatever— to be loaded onto it, there was a small cargo but there was also something a person was going to carry apparently, it was a short trip, she wasn’t worried about it. The mechanic had already signed off and she’d done most of the pre-flight checks. Kes had come running up like he’d forgotten something.

He was talking to her belly, which was— well, he did it a lot. Apparently you were supposed to start doing this from the “first day” of the child’s life, which Shara figured was a neat trick because she hadn’t caught on until she’d missed a period. But it meant he felt like he had to make it up, apparently.

“You have to tell him what you’re doing, remember,” he said earnestly to Shara. “When you’re flying.”

“Can’t I just— _think_ it really hard,” Shara said.

“No,” Kes said, “I think we’ve established that neither of us is any good at psychic communication so it’s not likely our son would be.”

Shara put her hand in Kes’s hair, tousling it gently. “I have to talk out loud to him,” she said. He’d told her this before. She sighed. “But I’m not going to be alone in there.” She’d talked to him a little bit on her last voyage, but then, she talked to herself a lot on long solo flights, and it hadn’t really seemed any different. Mostly she’d told him that she really didn’t know what she was doing and hoped his father’s people could make up the deficit.

“Talk quietly then,” Kes said, “I’m sure he can hear you, he’s right there.”

“I don’t think he has ears yet,” Shara pointed out. She’d read a lot of holobooks about pregnancy and birth now. They were mostly not reassuring. It wasn’t possible yet, she did know, to tell whether the child were a boy or a girl except by some difficult test, but for some reason Norasol had concluded it was a boy. A little regretfully, as well, so it didn’t seem to be wishful thinking. Girls were more auspicious for a first child, Norasol had informed her, and Shara thought _first?_ but managed to keep a straight face while Norasol assured her that a son would be equally welcome.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kes said, “he is a person and you need to talk to him like one. You need to do what you normally do but tell him about it so he will know what to expect. You have to make him a part of what you do. It’s really important.”

“I’m sure it is,” Shara said carefully. Kes had gotten really upset when he’d first explained this and she’d been skeptical, and he seemed to genuinely think that somehow even though literally nobody but his people did this and therefore the vast majority of humans ever born had not had this treatment, if she didn’t, something terrible would go wrong.

If it weren’t so goddamn sweet she’d be annoyed, but she couldn’t muster the energy. “It is,” Kes said, giving her a lingering, Very Serious, slightly bug-eyed Look before turning back to press his cheek against her again. “Listen to your Mama,” he said to her belly. “I have to say goodbye to you now. I can’t come along, I have to do my work here. But I’ll be waiting for you when you come back.”

Shara had to turn her face away so Kes wouldn’t see her smile and think she was laughing at him. It really was sweet. And it would be stifling, or annoying, the way he turned up at all hours and was solicitous and ridiculous— and the way Norasol was constantly sending her strange things to eat or drink or wear— but, well. Shara had never really had much of a family, and she was kind of enjoying it.

She had a terrible, terrible, creeping suspicion that all of this sweet attention was going to seamlessly transfer to the baby and leave her chilled and alone in its wake, and it was just as well, perhaps. If the shine wore off of her, in Kes’s eyes, it certainly wouldn’t wear off a child, not for someone with a family that had many, but never enough, children in it. She could doubt many things, but never that. If that meant Shara had to leave the baby behind, well— she’d only been assuming she’d need sole custody when she’d believed nobody else would want him. It. She wasn’t so sure it was a son. She was holding out until medical science backed it up.

Anyway. She’d been alone before. She could be alone again. If she had to be.

There was a child coming along the walkway, a little one, maybe two standard cycles, toddling along ahead of a woman, and Shara watched with interest— kids were rare up here— until she suddenly realized that they were making for this dock.

She tugged on Kes’s hair. He was still murmuring to her belly. “I gotta go,” she said.

He looked up at her, tousled now, and smiled sweetly. “Okay,” he said. “Listen. The bag, there are three bottles in it, Norasol put numbers on them. You need to drink them in order and like, space it out evenly. I don’t even know why, she told me it wasn’t my business. But it’s really important and she’ll know if you don’t.”

“I already have to pee all the time,” Shara said. “It’s going to be hard to do my job.”

“You have to drink a lot anyway,” Kes said reasonably. “And like. Don’t chug them, space it out, she said. There are also a bunch of those fruit things you like, Norasol made some little cookie things, and there’s a little bag, it has that candied root thing in it that helps your stomach, I wasn’t sure if you’d run out.”

“I brought some,” Shara said. The woman was close enough now that she could probably overhear them, and this was sort of unprofessional. Kes was at least on his way _to_ work, so he had no visible dirt on him, and he was such an attractive specimen that he made the harbormaster’s livery look reasonable, but it still wasn’t particularly good for her image as a polished and flashy courier pilot. “I’m fine. I have to go. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kes said, and then he caught sight of the kid, who had short very pale hair and was dressed like a little boy probably. He smiled, and the kid took it as an invitation and came right to him.

“Hi,” Kes said, in Basic, “what’s your name, friend?”

“Why onna foor?” the little boy demanded.

“I’m talking to the baby in her tummy,” Kes said, gesturing.

The little boy peered intently at her, then looked up. “Hi,” Shara said, a little self-conscious.

“Where baby?” the little boy demanded, puzzled. “Where baby is?”

“You can’t see him, he’s only tiny,” Kes said. “That’s where babies grow, inside their mothers, for a really long time, until they get big enough.”

“Armitage,” the woman said, to the child, “honey,” but she crouched next to him and didn’t pull him away or anything. She was beautiful, red-blond hair styled tightly back away from her face, dressed in a fashionable suit and expensive-looking boots, with a sleek leather bag over her shoulder and another case she’d just set down to reach for the child. Imperial, all over; this was some officer’s woman. But from the amount of makeup she was wearing, she wasn’t… quite respectable. Not by Imperial standards.

“Ma’am,” Kes said, and got to his feet. The woman picked the boy up, and smiled at him, and at Shara.

“I hope he didn’t cut in on anything real important,” the woman said, but it wasn’t sharp or sarcastic. And her accent was pure Outer Rim, low-class, uneducated. She was made up and turned-out like a society wife, but there was no hiding her origins. She wasn’t a wife, she was a mistress, absolutely.

“No, ma’am,” Kes said, and his expression softened back toward friendliness.

“Haffa baby,” the boy said, pointing at Shara, clearly still confused.

“Really,” the woman said to him, also clearly confused.

“I, uh,” Kes said, and looked almost apologetically determined. “Where I’m from we think it’s really important to talk to kids and babies as soon as they’re alive and uh. On up through.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and Shara thought with trepidation about how he’d just made an Imperial officer’s two-year-old learn about where babies come from. They were pretty notoriously conservative, the Imperials. “So I was talking to the baby that’s— in her womb.”

But the woman just said, “Oh!” with apparent real delight, and smiled at Shara. “You’re pregnant? Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” Shara said. “I, ah, hi, I’m your pilot, I was just going to go finish up the pre-flight checks.”

“Let me help you with your bags,” Kes said to the woman, and picked up her suitcase.

“Thank you,” she said, apparently sincere, “oh, that’s too kind.” Kes scooped up the bag from next to Shara as well, and took both into the ship.

“It’s what I do,” Kes said, sweet and charming, “I load things onto ships,” and stowed the suitcase neatly into the onboard luggage compartment, put the bag with the various strange Norasol specialties into the compartment in the cockpit, and then helped the woman fasten her shoulder bag into the harness of one of the passenger seats. He then sat down and tinkered with the adaptations for the child restraints in another of the passenger seats. Shara went and began her pre-flight checks, listening with half an ear as Kes charmed the stuffing out of the curious little boy, who climbed all over him and was instantly his best friend.

The woman wasn’t far behind, and Shara made sure to tamp way down on any jealousy, as the woman asked if they had any kids yet and Kes shyly, sweetly said this was their first, and so on, with a lot of lowered eyelashes and shy smiles and bashful head-tilting. Kes wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t really flirting with an Imperial officer’s mistress in front of her. He was just being polite, and it was only her hormones that were making her territorial.

(Which had made for some fun times in the bedroom on the occasions she’d managed to get him to stop talking to the baby. Pulling his hair seemed to do the trick nicely. Oh, that was a nice warm little memory to sustain her for a moment. Maybe she’d make him pay for this later, make him beg and promise...)

Finally Shara came over to where Kes was sitting on the floor being interrogated by the child about loading droids— of which the child had a toy, which he had produced from the bag somewhere— and said, “Kes, won’t you be late to work?”

He tilted his head backward to look up at her. “Late?” he said, frowning and thickening his accent. “I don’t think I know what that word means?”

“Kes,” Shara said, covering her face.

“It’s— that’s, it’s _tarde_ , right? That also means like, afternoon,” Kes said, in the same over-exaggerated holodrama Iberican accent. “And it’s not even close to noon yet, I’m fine!”

“You are terrible,” she said. “Get out of my ship.”

He grinned. “I am terrible,” he said. “Okay, my little friend, I have to go. It was nice to meet you both. Be good for your mother, yes?”

“Kay,” the little boy agreed. Kes transferred him back into his mother’s arms and stood up, pausing and stooping to kiss Shara’s belly.

“You be good too,” he said seriously, to the not-yet-even-a-bump, and then straightened up. Shara had covered her face in embarrassment, and he pried her hand away to kiss her cheek. “Take care.”

“I always do,” she said, but softened enough to put her hand on his face for a moment. He was so pretty.

“Talk to him,” he said. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Shara said, moved by his sincerity.

“Norasol will _know_ if you do not drink the tea she made you,” he said, pausing at the hatch to look back.

“I promise I will drink it,” Shara said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek again, and she pretended to push him out of the hatch. He laughed, and she closed the hatch behind him, and turned around.

“ _Stars_ he was adorable,” the woman said. “What a lucky woman you are!”

“He’s _terrible_ for my ultra-cool image,” Shara said, and called up the cargo manifest, and sure enough, M. Sanda and A. Hux, and it didn’t mention that A. Hux was a toddler. Well, she supposed it didn’t matter.

“Not at all,” the woman said.

Shara laughed. “He’s a big nerd,” she said.

“But he’ll be a great father,” the woman said, tousling the hair of her little boy with perhaps a touch of mournfulness.

Shara considered that, checking in with the control tower. Still approximately on schedule for takeoff in seventeen minutes. “He will,” she said. She left the comm tab up and brought the last of the ship’s systems online, though she’d wait to start the burners heating up until t-minus-five minutes. She knew this model of ship well and that was part of how she avoided wear and tear and excess fuel consumption— precisely timed _everything_.

“When are you due?” the woman asked, arranging several toys around the child’s seat and moving back to her secured bag to rummage through it.

Shara paused in her setup work. “Uh,” she said. “You know, I’m not sure? I’m barely out of the first trimester yet.”

“Oh,” the woman said, “well— I mean, I figured you still had to be pretty early. He said this is your first?”

“Oh yeah,” Shara said. “Hey, we’re at about fifteen minutes out now, what else do you think you’re gonna need before I gotta fasten everything down?”

It was a good end to conversation, for now, getting everything sorted out, and it wasn’t until they’d navigated at sub-light out of the crowded shipping lanes and made the jump to hyperspace, and Shara had finally gotten to go pee, that Mirron (for so the woman was named) came and sat next to her and said, “So how long have you been married?”

Shara bought herself a moment with a swig of tea out of Bottle Numero Uno. Lie, or no? Mirron had been nothing but kind, however, and little Armitage (what a horrible name) was asleep. And Shara was absolutely certain that whoever _Hux_ was, he was Armitage’s father and had no intention of making any formal promises to Mirron whatsoever. Her status was solely contingent on the acceptance of that child, and most likely she’d be cast aside when he was old enough not to need her, or when she was no longer pretty enough to be a credit to Hux.

Truth, then. Shara sighed. “It’s a long story,” she said, “but we’re actually not.”

“Oh,” Mirron said, startled, but covered it with a graceful laugh. “Oh, well.” There was a moment’s awkward silence, and then Mirron said, “If _it’s a long story_ was code for _I don’t want to talk about it_ , we don’t have to, but I am— well, I’d really enjoy having something to talk about instead of thinking on where we’re headed.”

Ah. Shara contemplated Bottle Numero Uno. It was not unpleasant, but was very odd, sort of— grassy, minty, herbal, oddly satisfying. “We met on that spaceport,” Shara said, “so I didn’t really know this, but he’s— from a very particular group of people? And so among his people there are a bunch of really complicated rituals you have to do if you want to get married. And they can’t be done in space. They have to be done on a planet. And his mother has to be there. That kind of thing.”

“That sounds as charming as he is,” Mirron said, leaning her elbow on the copilot’s arm rest and tilting her head a little. She was sitting sideways so she could see the sleeping child. She really was a beautiful woman, but there was an uncomfortableness about how made-up she was, like that wasn’t her natural state and she was only wearing it like armor she’d borrowed. Shara could see that her sleek hair had a little bit of frizz underneath, like it was naturally curly and had been flattened down to achieve the polished fashionable look.

“I haven’t decided on the charming-versus-annoying divide yet,” Shara said. “I mean— I’m a spacer, I was born out here, I’ve never really lived planetside. I don’t know what he means. His people have _livestock_.”

“I can tell you a lot of things about getting involved in a culture that values different things than you’re used to,” Mirron said, and Shara glanced over at her in some alarm; she looked hollow-eyed and suddenly older than her years. Shara wouldn’t have said she was much older than she herself was, but now she looked ancient.

“Oh shit,” Shara said.

***

Mirron never did volunteer much information about where they were going and what would become of her when they got there, but she didn’t have to. Hux was a powerful Imperial officer, was all Shara really needed to know; Mirron knew him because she’d been a kitchen worker where he’d been living and he’d taken a fancy to her. She used that exact phrase, _he took a fancy to me_ , and made an eloquent _what can you do_ gesture, and Shara’s entire spine went stiff and cold and she set her teeth and made herself smile at the sweet-faced little boy, who was certainly not destined to stay that way. _Hux thinks he can be useful_ , Mirron said, and Shara could not conceal her expression. Mirron’s eyes mirrored the same look, behind her careful practiced neutral-polite-pleasant face with too much makeup. This was not her choice; she was a tarted-up mistress in fancy clothes well above the station her accent suggested, and it was not going to end well for her, and she knew that.

Shara made the return trip with a low-level Imperial officer hand-carrying some important folio of data. He was very full of himself and a little disdainful of her. Horrifyingly, he lowered himself to make a pass at her about half an hour into the sixteen-hour trip, and Shara took immense pleasure in telling him “Sorry, honey, I’m pregnant, and my husband’s big and jealous,” and maybe it wasn’t quite honest of her to make it sound like Kes was some Fronteras goon, but it wasn’t right of that officer to think she was an object for the taking.

If it hadn’t worked, she also kept a stunner in her left thigh pocket, and it left no marks. She could’ve stunned him and tied him down for the whole time, and she knew her shipping company would back her up. They were really serious about pilot safety, and she had just enough of a reputation with them by now that they’d take her word on things.

But she got back to the home spaceport and discharged her disgruntled and haughty passenger, trudged home exhausted, and discovered that it was the middle of the night and Kes was fast asleep— sitting upright on the floor in the corner of the room, a datapad next to one limp hand, head bowed to his chest. He startled awake as she turned the lights on, and scrabbled the datapad up, holding it to his chest as he scrambled for his bearings.

“Kes,” Shara said, “what are you doing?”

He blinked up at her, round-eyed and disoriented, and as soon as he recognized her his mouth went wide and soft and curled up into a smile. “Hey,” he said, hoarse and sleepy, “you’re back.”

“I am,” she said, looking down at him. He wasn’t a goon, but he was big and capable and she knew he could be ruthless. No, it hadn’t been a lie at all to tell that little Imperial weasel that Kes would straight-up murder him. But she supposed she shouldn’t assume. “Hey, would you ever kill a man?”

“Have I ever killed a man?” Kes asked, not quite hearing her. “I mean. Not outright.” He rubbed his face, and frowned. “Why?”

“Would you, though,” she asked. “Like, in cold blood.”

“I don’t know about cold blood,” Kes said, “but in a fight, I’ve probably injured at least one or two people bad enough that they’d’ve died of it.” He shook his head very slightly, and gave her a hawkish-sharp look. “Do I need to kill a man?” He got to his feet, graceful and urgent and awake now, and set the datapad down on the side table to take her by the arms. “Did someone hurt you? Did something happen?”

“No,” she said, and pulled herself in to his chest to embrace him. “Nothing happened, but a guy made a comment to me and I told him my husband was a big mean jealous dockworker, and I feel bad for talking about you like that.”

“I am, though,” Kes said. “I mean, maybe not jealous, but I’ll kill a man for you. I’m almost insulted you had to ask.”

“You’re not jealous?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No,” he said.

She moved her hands up to his shoulders and pushed him down onto the couch, climbing onto his lap and pinning him down. “I _am_ jealous,” she said. “When you were flirting with that Imperial woman and she was eating you up with a spoon I was getting _so_ jealous.”

“I wasn’t flirting,” Kes said, genuinely astonished. “I hope she didn’t think I was! I would never disrespect you like that.”

She got comfortable astride his lap, wriggling down into position. Her belly pressed against his, a little; she was getting thicker and she didn’t know yet how she felt about that. “I know,” she said, and let her voice sink into a low purr. “But I wanted to claim you anyway.” She curled a hand around the back of his neck, running her fingernails up into his hair. “Because you’re mine.”

He liked that, she knew he did, or she’d have kept her weird territorial urges to herself. They weren’t entirely a pregnancy thing, she’d had them before. Or had she?

She’d have to do the math. She might’ve been pregnant already. But she still didn’t think the hormones were to blame.

“Yes ma’am,” he said happily, meekly, turning his face up to her, eyes hesitant and submissive. It was so sweet, the way he yielded to her, and she didn’t know why she liked it so much. Pretty much everything with him was new to her, and it was weird.

“What would you do if you met a guy who’d been with me before?” Shara asked, genuinely curious.

Kes shrugged. “Congratulate him on his good taste?”

“What if he said he planned to get back with me?” she asked.

Kes gave her a soft but feral smile. “I’d wish him luck,” he said, “and if he said anything disrespectful I’d make him sorry, but I wouldn’t stop him from talking to you if that’s what you wanted him to do.”

“You really wouldn’t be jealous,” she said, considering that.

Kes shook his head a little, though he didn’t have a lot of freedom of motion, and it made her put both of her hands in his hair and wrap her fingers through the thick soft depths of it, short as it was. It was just long enough to get a handful of, on top. His eyes went a little glazed as she did so.

“What if I want you to?” she asked.

“Want me to be jealous?” He considered it, though he was pretty distracted, what with all the touching. She ran her hands through his hair, knowing he liked that so much he’d barely be able to think. “I mean. Not like stake-my-territory jealous, I’d just be sad. It's ugly, I mope a lot, it's not hot in the least.” She tugged a little on a double handful of his hair, and his eyes fluttered shut for a second. “I could be really protective though. That I know I can do. I could be _so_ good at that. If someone bothered you I’d be _delighted_ to make them go away."

“I’ve killed a man for putting his hands on me,” Shara said. It sounded better when she told the story like that, nice and neat and pat. Made her sound cool, instead of savage. But life out here was pretty savage, and was a pretty constant battle to look cool and effortless instead of panting and terrified. Her papa had made her practice, and it had cost that man his life, and he’d deserved it.

“I could do that,” Kes said. “I would do that. If you wanted.” He managed to get his eyes open all the way. “Seriously though did something happen, because I will.”

“I can take care of myself,” Shara told him.

“You don’t have to, though,” he said, and she pulled her hands out of his hair and slid them down around his neck to pull herself as close to him as she could get. She didn’t gain any ground, she was already squashed against him, but it meant she pressed her breasts into his face. And those, those also were bigger, she’d had to get new breastbands before anything else. They were too tender for her to want him to touch them, but he was clearly aesthetically enjoying them just fine.

“I used you as leverage,” she said. “I told him to watch himself that my big mean jealous husband didn’t come for him because Fronteras is very good at writing accidents off.”

“Use me all you want,” Kes said, a little muffled. It was too much; she had to pull back and yank her shirt off, and he picked her up and deposited her reverently into the bed.

“I aim to,” she said, tilting her hips up so he could get her trousers off her. “Get down here,” she added, and was rewarded with that sweet grin of his that meant he had the best kind of plans.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I shouldn't have the above Rigoberta Menchu quote without this one too:  
> "This is part of the reserve that we've maintained to defend our customs and our culture. Indians have been very careful not to disclose any details of their communities, and the community does not allow them to talk about Indian things. I too must abide by this. This is because many religious people have come among us and drawn a false impression of the Indian world. We also find a _ladino_ using Indian clothes very offensive. All this has meant that we keep a lot of things to ourselves and the community doesn't like us telling its secrets. This applies to all our customs."
> 
> i.e. the things she's enumerated are the parts that aren't secret. That's what I'm trying to draw from-- not appropriate things wholesale, but use an idea of a different way of seeing the world, and build characters and settings on top of that.  
> And I want to reiterate: in the real world, the Maya are not vanished, they remain in their homeland practicing their indigenous religion and way of life wherever they can.


End file.
